Degrees of Deception

Transcript

Australia has been gripped by a national debate over how to fund our university education. But perhaps there's a more important question: what is it worth?

A Four Corners investigation has unearthed alarming new evidence of a decline in academic standards at institutions around the country.

Lecturers and tutors are grappling with a tide of academic misconduct and pressure from faculty managers to pass weak students. Many say commercial imperatives are overtaking academic rigour.

But why is this happening?

As Federal Government funding for universities has declined, Vice-Chancellors have been forced to look elsewhere to fill the void.

And for much of the past two decades, they've been tapping into a booming market - full fee-paying overseas students.

Right now the country's 40 universities are pulling in billions of dollars from students who are desperate for a degree from an Australian university and the possibility of a job and permanent residency.

But to ensure a steady flow of students from overseas, universities have had to ensure their entry requirements are sufficiently low.

This week, reporter Linton Besser also provides alarming evidence of corruption among the network of overseas agents who tout for business on universities' behalf.

"The risk is they're going to put applicants through to the university with fake qualifications or who they know have cheated on tests, or who are trying to undertake some sort of visa fraud." - Corruption investigator

Ironically, these forces are also placing international students under enormous pressure.

Despite the promises of agents, and after meeting universities' entry requirements, many don't have the level of English needed to successfully undertake a degree course.

It's a situation that leaves students isolated and desperate; a scenario fuelling a thriving blackmarket in plagiarism and the corruption of some academics.

An experienced lecturer has told Four Corners the failure to maintain standards in the course she teaches means graduates could put lives in danger when they begin working.

"They might find themselves being the only registered nurse on duty. And that is something that frightens me." - University Nursing lecturer

With universities now hooked on the income derived from foreign students, very few university employees can openly acknowledge these problems. Those who do, say that they face the possibility they will lose their job.

DEGREES OF DECEPTION, reported by Linton Besser and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 20th April at 8.30pm on ABC. It is replayed on Tuesday 21st April at 10.00am and again on Wednesday 22nd at midnight. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 at 8.00pm Saturday, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.

Transcript

KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: They promise a top-line education but they pay dodgy agents offshore to drum up business...

ROBERT WALDERSEE, DR., EXEC. DIR., CORRUPTION PREVENTION, ICAC: The university managers had personal and financial relationships with the agents.

KERRY O'BRIEN: ... turn a blind eye to cheating...

ZENA O'CONNOR, DR., SESSIONAL LECTURER, FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND PLANNING, UNI. OF SYDNEY: There is an unwritten rule not to fail students.

KERRY O'BRIEN: ... and turn out poorly trained graduates.

LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Would they have been safe in a hospital?

BARBARA BEALE, LECTURER (RET'D.), SCHOOL OF NURSING, UNI. OF WESTERN SYDNEY: No. No way.

ZENA O'CONNOR: Education is not an industry.

KERRY O'BRIEN: What is going on in our universities? Welcome to Four Corners.

They're supposed to be centres of excellence in learning. They're supposed to be securing this country's economic future and social wellbeing through the next generations of well-educated graduates.

They're selling access to millions of foreign students and reaping many billions of dollars of revenue.

But now the alarm has been raised that, increasingly, Australian universities are exposing themselves to corrupt practice, to lower standards, to systemic abuse of the system.

One instance you'll see tonight is the revelation from whistleblowers that some foreign students and other poor English speakers are graduating as nurses from Australian universities, dangerously under-qualified.

Universities have turned increasingly to foreign students regularly recruited through corrupt agencies to fill the gap left by a decline in funding from the public purse, which Education Minister Christopher Pyne wants to cut further.

Academics are under pressure to pass students, irrespective of their ability, in order to keep revenue from overseas students flowing in.

LINTON BESSER: On this trading floor, an Australian commodity is running hot. But it's not coal or iron ore for sale: it's our other major export to the world - tertiary education.

This is the booming billion-dollar market in international students that now underpins the survival of Australia's universities.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: Universities are fully aware there are problems with, with international student businesses they operate. But it is a very difficult problem they face. They are heavily dependent on the revenue. It's a cut-throat industry.

LINTON BESSER: Right now, Australia is gripped by the question of how to pay for our university education.

But there's a more fundamental question to be asked: what exactly are we getting for our money? Have our universities traded away academic standards in the race for cash?

ZENA O'CONNOR: There is a culture of leniency. Help them through, help them to get through. Do whatever it takes. Bend over backwards. Help them to get through. Let them resubmit and resubmit.

PAUL FRIJTERS, LECTURER, SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, UNI. OF QUEENSLAND: We've got to pass the vast majority of our students, no matter what their level is, no matter what their prior knowledge is, no matter how much or how little effort they put in.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: The conditions within the university are conducive to corruption.

LINTON BESSER: The New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption has got some big scalps, including some of the state's most corrupt politicians.

Now it's turned its sights onto universities.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: Students being exploited; students cheating; students bribing academics; academics being pressured to turn a blind eye to problems.

LINTON BESSER: In a new report, corruption prevention director Dr Robert Waldersee has raised the alarm about universities' troubling use of agents offshore to recruit students.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: So every single university we spoke to has said that, at some point, they've had problems with some of their agents: with false documentation and often collusion with their students.

The risk is they're going to put applicants through to the university with fake qualifications, or who they know have cheated on tests, or who are trying to undertake some sort of visa fraud.

Vice-chancellors have accepted as necessary the use of these unregulated middlemen to recruit the vast numbers of overseas students on whom they now rely.

This Beijing agent is called Shinyway. It has represented universities including Queensland, Monash, Sydney, Newcastle, Southern Cross, ACU, ANU and UTS.

Our undercover reporter is asking how the agent can help if his child has a poor academic record. He is then told Shinyway will accept a forged school transcript.

SHINYWAY ADVISER (translation): Make some variation and make it look normal. As long as it's not lower than 60, I can process it. I don't want them to be written too high either.

LINTON BESSER: This time, it's EduGlobal, who also represents a string of prestigious local universities such as Monash, Melbourne, Queensland, Griffith, Tasmania, Southern Cross, Western Sydney, Macquarie and UTS.

UNDERCOVER REPORTER (translation): Is it possible to make it look better?

EDUGLOBAL ADVISER (translation): You can. It's acceptable as long as the school affixes their stamp on it.

LINTON BESSER: This hidden camera footage raises alarming questions about the integrity of international student admissions to a host of Australian universities.

EDUGLOBAL ADVISER (translation): As long as the academic transcript can show a result of at least 70, we guarantee the issue of an offer letter.

LINTON BESSER: Four Corners' undercover journalist also made a remarkable discovery about how lax English requirements are becoming to gain a student visa.

This agency is EIC.

She is promising special help to get around the robust English language test, known as IELTS, that has traditionally been used to enter an Australian university.

EIC ADVISER (translation): If this kid can't get a reasonable mark or close to it, we could arrange an internal test. The IELTS test is hard. The internal test is comparatively easy: listening, reading and writing, three parts. The level of difficulty will decrease.

LINTON BESSER: Down the road is AOJI, one of the biggest agents in the country. It made a similar offer.

AOJI ADVISER (translation): To enrol into a university there is a standard, but through our application we could manage that.

LINTON BESSER: The agent suggests the student could sit an alternative exam called Versant.

AOJI ADVISER (translation): The 48th ranked university in the world, UNSW, which is rated third in Australia: they have their own internal test system. It is called Versant. It is acknowledged by the international community and is the same as IELTS.

LINTON BESSER: But it's not the same: it's much easier.

Since 2012, the Government has asked universities, not the Department of Immigration, to determine who gets a visa to enter the country to study. It no longer asks that entrants meet a nationally recognised standard.

And universities, which are desperate to increase the flow of overseas students, can now decide how many come into the country.

AOJI ADVISER (translation): Some people might have difficulty with IELTS. They could use this system.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: The falsification of documents that comes through from students is often done in collusion with the, ah, agents themselves. In some cases, the universities have hired independent verifiers to check documents and qualifications and only to find that the students and the agents have been colluding or bribing the document verifiers as well.

LINTON BESSER: Barmak Nassirian is a Washington DC-based specialist on international education.

BARMAK NASSIRIAN, FMR DIR., US ASSOC. OF COLLEGIATE REGISTRARS: When you put such an agent, such a gatekeeper on commission, the risk that sending an adequate number of warm bodies, ah, may be paramount for them. The risk that they may engage in manipulation, embellishment or other kinds of academic shenanigans, just to make sure they meet their quota, ah, is not negligible.

LINTON BESSER: In America, the college code of conduct has cautioned against the payment of incentives to offshore agents and commissions have been banned domestically.

There's no such ruling in Australia, even though universities have already been compromised by these relationships.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: We were told in one case where the university managers had personal and financial relationships with the agents they were supposed to be overseeing. And the university now has to rotate its managers to stop that corruption developing.

LINTON BESSER: These agents usually charge students and their families for their services. What they don't tell them is they also pocket often secret commissions from Australian universities seeking a winning edge over others around the world.

In total, these commissions are estimated to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Students are none the wiser.

IRIS, CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENT, UNSW: They were sort of trying to say that University of Sydney, maybe, is better.

LINTON BESSER: Did the agent ever say that he or she was being paid by the universities as well?

IRIS: Mmm, no. I'm thinking maybe University of Sydney is paying them a higher rate. (Laughs)

(Iris and Josie are serving dinner for themselves and Linton)

JOSIE, ARCHITECTURE STUDENT, UNSW: Smells yummy.

LINTON BESSER: Iris and Josie are just two of the 250,000 international students in Australia.

JOSIE: Do you use chopstick?

LINTON BESSER: They might not know it but they are the vital income stream keeping Australia's universities afloat.

JOSIE: I need to take a picture of my masterful...

LINTON BESSER: But they're highly conscious of what it's costing their parents.

(to Iris) Just tell me again, how much it is?

IRIS: Oh, they used to be, last year it was $16,000 for each semester. This time it's $18,000, so it's pretty much, my parents say, "After four years we ha- we can buy you a house."

LINTON BESSER: Iris and Josie are good students but even they are under considerable pressure.

Iris hopes her $140,000 degree will lead to a job in Australia and permanent residency - or PR.

(to Iris) And do you feel the pressure of how expensive that is? Do you think about that?

IRIS: Yeah, I do, 'cause, um, my parents say, ah, "You'd better stay in Australia and get a PR, otherwise if you come back to China it's really pointless."

LINTON BESSER: But there are big obstacles to overcome and the biggest of all is the English language.

IRIS: The first semester of my first year, um, I just came into uni and, ah, I was doing an assignment with a local group.

In the beginning I couldn't understand anything they said. I can understand the lecturer. I can understand all the textbook, but I can't understand normal conversation.

After a while they really just get familiar with me. They say, "At the beginning we thought you have antisocial, some sort of problem."

(Josie and Linton laugh)

IRIS: I was like, "No! I don't have antisocial problems." (Laughs) Yeah, they just - now, some of them still think I'm weird just because the first impression is: I'm so quiet.

LINTON BESSER: Alex Barthel used to run the language centre at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has been a long-standing advocate for higher English language entry standards for universities.

ALEX BARTHEL, HIGHER EDUCATION ACADEMIC LANGUAGE & LEARNING CONSULTANT: Academic staff increasingly are frustrated by the fact that they are there to teach pharmacy or engineering or IT or whatever they're, they're teaching. And they basically say, "It is not my job to help somebody with 65 spelling errors on the first page of an assignment. It's not my job to teach them basic English grammar."

LINTON BESSER: Although the Federal Government has abandoned a national standard, The International English Language Testing System - or IELTS for short - still recommends a score of seven out of nine for university entry.

But most students arrive here with far lower scores than that: scores as low as 4.5.

ALEX BARTHEL: They're coming in believing that, "If the university says that I require an IELTS 5.5, I believe the university and I trust them that they have told me the truth about what's required. Now I find that, in fact, to be able to read the text that I'm asked to read in, in my, in my degree course, I find that I don't understand, er, what it is. I don't understand the questions that I'm asked in assessment tasks."

LINTON (to Iris and Josie): You both have such wonderful English but do you think other international students: do you think that's their biggest challenge?

IRIS: I think it is.

JOSIE: Actually, it is.

IRIS: It is. One of my friends, who came from China - we did a foundation study, so we are really used to it, but he just came straight here, straightaway here and he says he has a headache in English.

JOSIE: That depends on which kind of Chinese they are. If you meet some Chinese, they just play with Chinese. They will never improve their English forever.

LINTON BESSER: In fact, in the beginning, Iris and Josie could not speak or write in English well enough to get entry to their degrees.

But like thousands of others, the university still offered them a place, as long as they completed a one-year bridging program, which involves a 10- to 20-week language course.

Students who complete these pathway or foundation programs are never then subjected to another IELTS exam and are funnelled into the first or even second year of their degree program.

ALEX BARTHEL: Of course it's a loophole, because some of them fail and some of them don't fail. And that's, that's, that's the shocking thing, as far as I'm concerned: is those students who come into second year or even the first year, with a very, very low language proficiency, er, level, ah, who manage to pass through their courses.

ZENA O'CONNOR: Often their emails and their essays are almost impossible to decipher. Um, that's in a very small proportion of cases but that does beg the question: have these students passed the basic, ah, test for university entry in terms of written, written English?

LINTON BESSER: And some of these are students that are at the end of their degree?

ZENA O'CONNOR: And some of these students are at the end of their degree. It's horrifying. I don't know what to say about that.

LINTON BESSER: Two months ago, Dr Zena O'Connor invited Four Corners into the life of a modern academic.

She teaches units for the design and architecture faculty and, as one of a rising number of casuals, O'Connor teaches online from home and with little faculty support.

It's an isolating experience but it's a big money spinner for the University of Sydney.

ZENA O'CONNOR: I teach one subject bringing in between $250,000 and $450,000. It's one elective. There are hundreds of other electives. There are hundreds of other core subjects. Each of these are bringing in similar amounts o- of money. The, the income stream, particularly from international students, is huge. Make no mistake: it is huge.

LINTON BESSER: At Sydney University, international students now make up a quarter of all enrolments. At other universities like RMIT in Melbourne, they're almost 50 per cent of the cohort.

With thousands of students often struggling with English, the pressure to pass is helping to fuel a black market.

ZENA O'CONNOR: I'm, I'm staggered by the increase in plagiarism. Ah, to start with: in my experience, it was a very small proportion - you know, maybe two, three, four per cent. I would peg it now at being much, much higher: well over 50 per cent.

Ah, and some of the cases of extreme plagiarism, where a student has plagiarised at least 80 per cent if not up to 100 per cent of their paper: that proportion is growing and that level of extreme plagiarism I didn't see five, 10 years ago.

The students handed in their first assignments. Ah, the deadline was last Friday so I'm just finishing off the marking of those now.

LINTON BESSER: We caught up again with O'Connor recently to see how her class is performing. Of the 53 papers she had marked, half had earned a fail.

ZENA O'CONNOR: As you can see from this list, all of the students who've been highlighted: they've got very bad marks and the reason for that predominantly is they've either plagiarised or cut and pasted to such an extent that, um, they've earned themselves a fail mark.

As you see from some of the marks - 10, 15, 18 - those students have plagiarised probably more than 80 per cent...

LINTON BESSER: Wow.

ZENA O'CONNOR: ... in their assignments. Yep.

LINTON BESSER: The results are indicative of the pattern she has seen for years.

She hasn't instituted formal proceedings against any students for plagiarism because, she says, she was told to do all she could to pass them.

ZENA O'CONNOR: The response would be: thank you for your feedback. And that has been the same response every time I bring it to the attention of anyone at, at university. And that seems to be the end of it. It doesn't, it's not investigated.

LINTON BESSER: And what about the individual students involved?

ZENA O'CONNOR: Um, they're offered another chance to resubmit - and another chance.

LINTON BESSER: Zena O'Connor says, as a sessional academic, she has been left on her own to manage this problem.

ZENA O'CONNOR: It seems to me that there is an unwritten rule not to fail students. That isn't spoken about, but I'm advised to give students every concession possible, every opportunity to resubmit and resubmit, even when the semester is finished and so on.

LINTON BESSER: We approached Sydney University's vice-chancellor, Michael Spence, for an interview, but he declined.

In a statement the university said Dr Spence will soon "chair a taskforce on academic misconduct." It also said: "International students must meet stringent entry requirements including English language proficiency."

MURRAY FISHER: Yeah. It's to make sure that everyone is on the same page as to what your responsibilities are in...

LINTON BESSER: Plagiarism is now such a problem, it's the focus of one of the very first tutorials for all Sydney University nursing students.

(to Murray Fisher) Are they on notice from here on in?

MURRAY FISHER: They're certainly aware and therefore if something does happen, that, um, they do, um, something that is academically dishonest or, or is plagiarism, it then is, I suppose, harder for them to claim that it was reckless or innocently done.

MURRAY FISHER (to class): Then we have this thing called "negligent and dishonest plagiarism."

LINTON BESSER: The policy runs to 13 pages and describes an array of complex procedures.

MURRAY FISHER (to class): Plagiarism means presenting another person's work as one's own work by presenting, copying or reproducing it without appropriate acknowledgement.

LINTON BESSER: Many say formal procedures to tackle plagiarism are so bureaucratic, they actually deter academics from reporting it.

ALEX BARTHEL: To nail a student who has plagiarised is a very complex, lengthy, er, administrative procedure. In other words, the student has to be identified, has to be documented, it has to be proven, it has to be taken to a committee and so on and so on.

ZENA O'CONNOR: That process is quite onerous and it's my experience that most sessional staff just don't bother. They just don't bother reporting it. They'll ask the student to resubmit instead.

PAUL FRIJTERS: The exponential of this plus A...

LINTON BESSER: Another reason why plagiarism is under-reported is the increase in casual teaching contracts.

PAUL FRIJTERS: For a sessional academic, this is career-making or breaking: whether or not they, ah, they are seen to be liked by their students. So teaching evaluations - which are effectively, how do the students think about you? are, are make-or-break for their careers: ah, whether or not they get tenure. And in that, it's definitely important for them not to, ah, not to be seen to go against the party line.

(footage of Murray Fisher leading a tour of a laboratory)

MURRAY FISHER (to students): This is our main lab. There are other...

LINTON BESSER: It might be dangerous to let weak students through a degree in design, but it's potentially deadly in nursing.

LINTON BESSER: Until last year, Barbara Beale was a lecturer at one of the biggest nursing faculties in the country: the University of Western Sydney.

She is speaking out tonight because she fears some UWS nursing graduates may not be safe working with sick patients.

(to Barbara Beale) Do you think it's the case, Barbara, that students have got through and graduated with a degree from UWS in nursing who shouldn't have been allowed to do so?

BARBARA BEALE: Yes, I do think that is the case. I do.

LINTON BESSER: For Barbara, nursing has been a life-long love. She had worked as a registered nurse and midwife for decades.

But for the next 26 years she was an academic at UWS, rising to acting department head.

In 2012, just two years before she retired, she was awarded a vice-chancellor's Excellence in Teaching Award.

But now she laments what she says is a dramatic fall in standards.

BARBARA BEALE: A lot of students end up in the aged care sector. Who do we have in the aged care sector? The most vulnerable, ill people. And we have students who may have been pushed through university looking after them. Now, in the aged care sector there is not much supervision. Ah, very quickly they might find themselves being the only registered nurse on duty. And that is something that frightens me.

In 2009 a new nurse who had just graduated from UWS, Bhavesh Shah, fed a medicine cup of Morning Fresh dishwashing liquid to a 79-year-old man, mistaking it for his usual medication.

Authorities found Shah had not been able to read the label on the bottle.

After being registered as a nurse, Shah had failed English language tests six times.

In 2013 he was struck off. A reviewer assisting a Health Care Complaints Commission probe found the incident "defies belief."

And in its finding, the Nursing and Midwifery Tribunal said "he lacks the necessary proficiency in reading and writing [to be] a registered nurse in whom the general public can repose trust."

BARBARA BEALE: This concerns me because there are many academics there who are trying to do the right thing. And probably that student had been reported or had, it had been documented somewhere, wha- in the undergraduate studies. And yet they still graduated. So how did they graduate?

LINTON BESSER: At least two other UWS graduates have also been forced out by hospitals, losing their registration for poor English and dangerous practices.

UWS says there have been no similar cases since 2011.

But Barbara Beale says there was constant pressure at UWS to pass failing Bachelor of Nursing students.

BARBARA BEALE: I marked a student's work and I gave the student two out of thirty because I thought, "Well, I'll give them something for trying." And when we went to the cross-marking meeting - this is where a lot of things happen, at these cross-marking meetings - I said, "I think you need to look at this one." But she handed it to someone else. So the next person, who was an inexperienced academic, gave that student a pass mark.

LINTON BESSER: Beale objected again and again and says that it was only after the paper passed through the hands of three reviewers that the fail was upheld.

BARBARA BEALE: I was so upset. That was a very defining day, because if I hadn't really pressed that - if, if it had been somebody who had less experience or... I don't know, less conviction or something - that student would have passed.

LINTON BESSER: This person: would they have been safe in a hospital?

BARBARA BEALE: No. No way.

I've just seen what I think is the standard dropping and year after year after year. So Sharon and I talk a lot about that, don't we?

SHARON HILLEGE, DR., SNR LECTURER (RET'D.), SCHOOL OF NURSING, ACU & UWS: I think it's a sense of disappointment. It's, and because we really, I think, both of us have loved our nursing careers.

LINTON BESSER: You've published together. I mean...

One of Barbara's long-standing colleagues and friends, Dr Sharon Hillege, shares her concerns about UWS: concerns which extend not only to international students but also local students of non-English speaking background.

Hillege says she resisted pressure to pass weaker students but fears that other, more junior academics may have succumbed.

SHARON HILLEGE: There were some that definitely passed students that I would have believed should not have passed.

LINTON BESSER: Sharon Hillege stands up for what she believes in. Like Barbara, she too has been a nurse for more than 40 years.

And seven years ago she was among a group of academics who quit the Australian Catholic University. They were concerned about falling standards.

SHARON HILLEGE: Ultimately what we've got to do is produce a safe practitioner. And I didn't believe that those stu- those students would be safe practitioners. So, um, yes. It was morally and ethically abhorrent to me.

LINTON BESSER: Midway through 2008, the NSW Nursing and Midwifery Board raised concerns that ACU students were not completing the approved curriculum. It was concerned they were unsafe to practice.

LINTON BESSER: It was at that very time that Hillege was delivering a unit on ethics to final-year students. For a major class assignment, she failed 36 of them for serious plagiarism.

SHARON HILLEGE: I got a phone call or an email from a student, saying that the secretary to my boss had indicated that she was going to be given half-marks for her assessment task: and would I please change the results? And, um, I can tell you I was rather annoyed.

LINTON BESSER: Hillege gathered her colleagues and marched to the office of the then head of the nursing school.

SHARON HILLEGE: I gathered the teaching staff because I think they were all as indignant as I was. And I wanted to have people witness the fact that we had actually, um, indicated that we were not going to pass those students.

I was initially not given entr, then finally I insisted on having at least five minutes. And yeah, I was clearly instructed that I was to pass those students and I clearly indicated that I would not be passing those students. And I had the support of my teaching team.

LINTON BESSER: Four Corners has spoken to former colleagues who corroborate Hillege's account of the meeting.

Sharon Hillege left the university shortly afterwards. But the majority of students whose papers she had failed for academic dishonesty were registered just months later as graduate nurses.

SHARON HILLEGE: I think I was more angry about the injustice of it all: that in actual fact this plagiarism would just be condoned. Um, so here we are. We're trying to produce students that will be ethical, that, um, won't alter medication charts, will not do all of those things - and yet they could be given half-marks. It was just... I was just mortified.

LINTON BESSER: Another ACU nursing academic was so disturbed at the situation, she reported it to the then federal health minister, Nicola Roxon.

"I, as did several others of my colleagues, chose to leave the university where I had tenure, primarily because of increasing concern about students being admitted into the [Bachelor of Nursing] degree with extraordinarily poor basic English."

She went on to say they were pressured to "administer 'Clayton's'-type assignments, [to] pass students."

(to Tony Stokes) There have been specific cases where marks have been adjusted after the teacher has given them in the nursing faculty?

LINTON BESSER: Dr Tony Stokes is an ACU senior lecturer in economics who has previously been asked to re-mark papers in nursing subjects. He concedes there is still pressure today to pass students.

TONY STOKES: I am aware there may be still some areas where people are being called upon to justify the number of students they're failing.

I had a colleague who was in the business school and he explained to me that he'd been told that he was expected to fail no more than, more than 10 per cent.

LINTON BESSER: It was not until 2012 that the Australian Catholic University mandated the use of anti-plagiarism software to assist academics to identify cheats.

SHARON HILLEGE: I was aware that anti-plagiarism software existed. I'm clearly not sure why it hadn't been implemented in the school where we were working. Certainly it wasn't there at the time.

TONY STOKES: I know, even from my time as head of school, I was saying, "When can we get the plagiarism software? When can we get the plagiarism software?"

"Oh, we're trying to pick out a good software that will work." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd been asking it, for it for years. Um, people in, in the faculty, ah, had been asking for it. But it was a long process.

LINTON BESSER: But the point is that Turn It In and software platforms like that: they were commonplace at Australian university campuses in the period at which ACU did not have it?

TONY STOKES: Yes.

LINTON BESSER: The vice-chancellors of both ACU and UWS, Professor Greg Craven and Professor Barney Glover, also declined interview requests.

In a statement, ACU said it "takes the matter of honesty very seriously: and that it "follows policies to investigate incidents and students are disciplined appropriately."

Meanwhile, UWS stated it too took academic misconduct seriously and that it "completely rejects the accusation that the standard of our nursing program is 'falling' and our nursing students are 'weak and unsafe'."

The academics who have spoken out tonight are not alone in their concerns. In our research for this program, we spoke with scores of academics around Australia. The vast majority had witnessed or personally experienced the pressure to ignore plagiarism and to pass weak students.

But they were too scared to appear on camera. Many feared it would be the end of their careers.

(to Zena O'Connor) Speaking to Four Corners: what do you think will happen as a result of you speaking out on this?

ZENA O'CONNOR: I doubt that I'll be employed again next semester.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: We have a number of academics who spoke to us about the pressure they feel to pass students that they believe should not have passed.

In one case, an academic described where he had failed 50 per cent of the class and under pressure had to reconsider, and ended up only failing 20 per cent. In another case, an academic had his class re-marked without him being told - and an increased number of students passed.

LINTON BESSER: Universities have long denied this to be true. One academic who has applied her training to the question is economist and statistician Dr Gigi Foster.

She spent three years getting access to student performance data from two major universities, neither of which were her current institution, the University of NSW.

Foster found statistical evidence confirming a trend towards marks being inflated in classes with many international students.

GIGI FOSTER, DR., ASSOC. PROF., SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, UNI. OF NSW: If you have a larger fraction of weaker students in a given course then you would expect at the end of the course that you'd end up with a distribution of marks which was commensurately lower.

It seems to be that there is an adjustment made in response to a large fraction of international students, um, such that everybody's marks get buoyed up a little bit.

LINTON BESSER: Her findings lent scientific credibility to the claims of so many academics around the country that poorly-performing students were still passing.

GIGI FOSTER: So that's essentially the puzzle: is that you would expect the marks to be lower in the courses where there are larger fractions of demonstrably weaker students - and they don't seem to be lower.

LINTON BESSER: The participating universities were clearly unimpressed with Foster's findings and withdrew their cooperation.

GIGI FOSTER: So I was hoping to, you know, be able to continue the research. But, ah, the data feeds stopped after this paper came out.

LINTON BESSER: Why?

GIGI FOSTER: You'd have to ask the universities.

LINTON BESSER: Foster's research focused on international students but many academics have told Four Corners there are other threats to standards.

At ACU, for example, university entrance levels for domestic students - or ATARs - have plummeted by as many as 20 percentage points.

TONY STOKES: I think, ah, Professor Craven, our, our vice-chancellor, has had the view that we need to grow to survive in this sort of competitive marketplace. So as a result he did lower the ATARs to let in a lot of, a lot more students than we had previously.

LINTON BESSER: This has led to dramatic reductions in the difficulty of some courses being taught - although Tony Stokes doesn't agree.

TONY STOKES: Thirty per cent of our, our students have not completed Year 11 and 12 maths. And some of them just have blockages in terms of doing maths like division, subtraction and drawing graphs so...

LINTON BESSER: But if you haven't done Year 12 maths, doesn't economics rely on some basic calculus?

TONY STOKES: Um, it doesn't have to. What we tend to do is use computers more to actually solve the same sort of problems.

LINTON BESSER: ICAC's Robert Waldersee says universities suffer a real conflict of interest between recruitment on one hand and standards on the other.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: One of them will win out. Too often we believe that it's weighted more towards the recruitment and revenue and away from the controls on standards.

LINTON BESSER (to Zena O'Connor): In the past you've failed students who've done poorly. And you were going to talk me through

LINTON BESSER: Ironically, the victims of this conflict are often the students themselves.

ZENA O'CONNOR: If they do in fact fail, um, I'm often inundated with, with emails from them pleading, begging me to, to pass them.

LINTON BESSER: International students are sometimes in great distress.

ZENA O'CONNOR: "Dear Zena, um, my name is..." Um, "my student number is..." Um, "I don't know why I failed." Um, "I want to die now." The student then goes on to say, "I want to die now" again. Um, this isn't unusual. I get quite a lot of emails of this nature."

LINTON BESSER (to Zena O'Connor): It's pretty intense...

LINTON BESSER: Many are desperate to avoid returning home empty-handed.

ZENA O'CONNOR: "I am begging you, begging you to re-check my final mark. I will do anything that you say."

LINTON BESSER: I mean, i- is that an invitation to some kind of bribery or something?

ZENA O'CONNOR: I would hate to think what that is all about.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: These sort of emails are a symptom of the pr- problems that are created by the tension between capabilities that fall short of the demands of the university. And it puts students in increasingly desperate situations. For some students there really are few other options to, to try and pass. They may offer bribes to the academics. The academics may exploit the students. But that is what we mean by it being conducive to corruption.

LINTON BESSER: In 2009, Western Australia's Corruption and Crime Commission held public hearings into Nasrul Ali, a Curtin University finance lecturer.

TRANSCRIPTION OF AUDIO RECORDING OF NASRUL ALI (voiceover): I think it would make life a lot easier if I gave you a pass?

LINTON BESSER: The academic had been targeting international female students, one of whom secretly recorded him.

TRANSCRIPTION OF AUDIO RECORDING OF NASRUL ALI (voiceover): It's more about making it worth me changing your mark. You need to offer me a non-academic.

LINTON BESSER: The CCC found he was attempting to solicit sexual favours in return for higher grades.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: So you will see cheating. You will see students who are increasingly desperate. Where students are increasingly desperate, academics will or might take advantage of them.

VOICEOVER (expertassignmenthelp.com advertisement): Getting experts to help your school assignments was never this easy and affordable.

LINTON BESSER: There are plenty of other underground transactions thriving in universities...

TESTIMONIAL (expertassignmenthelp.com advertisement): When a friend asked me, "How I ace all courses with minimum effort?", I simply recommend them.

LINTON BESSER: ...including a lively trade in essays.

To test how easy it is, Zena O'Connor gave us permission to try to sell one of her old essays online.

(to Zena O'Connor) Thirty-five dollars?

ZENA O'CONNOR: Thirty-five dollars.

LINTON BESSER: That's all, I'm afraid.

ZENA O'CONNOR (laughs): Two, two salad sandwiches and a couple of coffees.

LINTON BESSER: We chose a website offering essays to students in Australia, the UK and the US, AssignmentHelp.net.

We asked if they could guarantee the essay would not be detected by the anti-plagiarism software used by universities, called Turn It In.

GUEST ACCOUNT, ASSIGNMENTHELP.NET (voiceover): Can you make sure it's OK with Turn It In? I don't want to get caught.

PETER, ASSIGNMENTHELP.NET (voiceover): Yes... price $100.

You can pay in cash but for that you need to visit our office. You can give payment to Jimmy.

LINTON BESSER: "Peter" sent us to see "Jimmy" at this ordinary suburban home in Werrington Downs in the western suburbs of Sydney.

(to Jeffrey) G'day. Here to see Jimmy about, ah, buying an essay.

JEFFREY: Nah. No-one here by that name.

LINTON BESSER: Really?

It wasn't Jimmy, but a man named Jeffrey. He said he knew nothing about the essay business. But at the same time, he wasn't surprised to see me.

JEFFREY: I used to run a mail-forwarding business.

LINTON BESSER: Oh, yeah.

JEFFREY: But that finished...

LINTON BESSER: This mail redirection service has had clients with a colourful history.

A decade ago, the house was listed as the address for 'Chancery International University', a bogus institute selling fake degrees.

We looked up the address and it's been associated with all kinds of scams, like dip, like, um, diploma mills 10 years ago and, um, you know, other weird online businesses.

JEFFREY: One- one of the reasons I got out of the business is because we had the Commonwealth Police arrive here at 7 o'clock one morning along with Customs. Someone had tried to forward, um, human growth hormones through us

LINTON BESSER: Wow.

These kind of transactions don't surprise Barmak Nassirian. The US has been grappling with corruption of university admissions head-on.

BARMAK NASSIRIAN: We have had instances of major public institutions naely entering the international recruitment business and, ah, accepting students from China who submitted, ah, transcripts but that later on proved to have been significantly altered and inaccurate. And that institution took those students in and graduated them.

LINTON BESSER: Just last month, armed Homeland Security officers raided this university in California, arresting three staff on suspicion of trading visas and enrolments for cash.

No-one wants to see these scenes on Australian campuses, but administrators can't turn off the tap on international students.

They see no alternative to refill their coffers.

ROBERT WALDERSEE: It's become relatively clear that for any one university to raise its standards of either English proficiency or other credentials or capabilities, alone, would only hurt that university. There is little gain for one university to step out of the pack.

LINTON BESSER: Universities are now stuck in an arms race. Students and standards are merely collateral damage.

BARMAK NASSIRIAN: At the end of the day, Australian universities are governed by Australians. And they really need to make a decision whether they're willing to undermine the credibility - international credibility - of credentials they manufacture in the name of more business.

ZENA O'CONNOR: Education is not an industry. And this is the mistake that the universities are making. Education is not an industry.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Of course, these same academics, these same universities, these same courses are processing Australian students as well. Are they somehow untouched by the kinds of activities and concerns revealed tonight?

Given what's at stake, it's unfortunate the vice-chancellors of the three universities featured in our story - Sydney, Western Sydney and the Australian Catholic University - couldn't front up in person and face the obvious questions.

Their unedited statements can be found on our website. And responses from the universities who use Shinyway Agency and EduGlobal Agency in Beijing are also on the website.

Next week: an extraordinary inside look at the Kurdish militia's fight against ISIS.